


Courting Rituals

by Domenika Marzione (domarzione)



Series: Qui Habitat [9]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-14
Updated: 2008-04-14
Packaged: 2017-11-03 06:58:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/378595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domarzione/pseuds/Domenika%20Marzione
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cam's not sure why anyone's coming to him for dating advice, but he's willing to try.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Courting Rituals

**Author's Note:**

> [Cast of Characters/the Big List of OCs (because there are more than seven people in Atlantis and they all have names)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/372765)

"Why are you asking _me_?" Cam asked plaintively, pausing in his application of berry syrup to his ice cream. He hadn't been around Atlantis long enough Before to appreciate what kind of changes everything had wrought on the commissary offerings, but he'd been assured that ice cream was one of the items that had actually _improved_ \-- without the Air Force shipping tons of bricks of lowest-bidder, industrial-grade "frozen dessert" on board the _Daedalus_ , the marines had not only learned to make their own, but they'd also gotten good at it. "At the risk of damaging my already fragile ego, I am not exactly the expert for advice here."

Standing next to him at the dessert condiments station, judiciously avoiding the orangish bits that might be nut meats and sticking to the chocolate shavings, Kirnon rolled his eyes as if Cam were being especially dense. It was a look he'd gotten used to, although now that they were both in Atlantis and not resistance fighters in the Milky Way anymore, Cam got it more from marines than his former partner in crime.

"Because she is from Earth, Mitchell," Kirnon replied, as if the answer were obvious. "And while you are a miserable failure when it comes to understanding women, you are a font of knowledge of your planet's culture."

Cam sighed. "Not my planet, just my country," he corrected, mostly to have some kind of retort. "And, really, if you're going to have any sort of success with Earth women, you're going to have to learn to recognize the verbal cues. If a woman says 'this is going to make me look bad', then you don't go and make it worse by confirming it."

"You are not a woman," Kirnon said, making it sound like something between a question and a reminder. Cam didn't know too much about the Salish beyond what had been in the [AAR of SG-1's adventures on PXY-887](http://gateworld.net/sg1/s2/213.shtml) and he didn't know what kind of changes had been wrought between then and the planet's enslavement by the Ori, but he'd long felt sure that Kirnon would have been at home on Sodan. He and Jolan would have been, without a doubt, thick as thieves. "And honesty is always a sound course of action."

"You remember that the first time you get asked if that outfit makes her look fat," Cam exhorted, looking for the little spoon for the maraschino cherries. Kirnon had it, since Cam had long since convinced him that sundaes needed cherries on top and the _Daedalus_ , for reasons unknown, had always had an ample supply even when they'd had no ice cream.

"Doctor Crandall is not fat," Kirnon said, handing over the spoon. He had that note of earnest confusion that made Cam think suddenly of Teal'c, so he focused on the cherries instead.

They returned to the table where they'd left their dinner trays, one of the two-seaters near the windows. The sky over Atlantis was clear, although they were high enough up that Cam could see the clouds of a distant weather system near the horizon.

"Rain later," Kirnon said, eyes on the same clouds. "It'll be good for hunting tomorrow. You should come out and join us sometime."

Once they'd ended up in Pegasus permanently, Kirnon had retired out to the mainland, preferring to be in environs closer to his native world than in sterile Atlantis. He was in the city today for a medical appointment, follow-up care for injuries received in the same ambush that had killed many of their band and nearly Cam as well. Kirnon had lost a hand and while everything seemed to be healing, it was still slow going and there was still a chance that he could lose the arm as well. He'd been offered a prosthesis for later, once his wounds had finally healed, but had refused it, instead trading his Salish bow and arrows for Athosian throwing knives and continuing on his merry way. Cam was under no impression that Kirnon was as unshaken by the loss of his hand as he pretended, but Kirnon did not want sympathy from him and so Cam did not offer any.

"I happen to like my soft, domesticated lifestyle," he said as he dug in to his sundae, enjoying Kirnon's grunt of disgust even though they both knew that Cam was not living a life of idle relaxation. They'd spent the better part of a year glued to each other's sides and Cam knew what would set him off and was not above using that for his own entertainment. It wasn't like Kirnon didn't do the same. And so while Kirnon had accepted the necessity of MREs and whatever passed as food on board the _Daedalus_ , he still maintained a healthy disdain for anyone who wasn't minimally prepared to see to their own sustenance. "You going to teach Doctor Crandall how to hunt? Does she even eat meat?"

Crandall was a botanist and Cam was a little fuzzy on the details of how she had attracted Kirnon's attention. Botany, his marines had informed him with tired sighs, were eager travelers whose complete lack of anything approaching common sense or self-preservation instinct was only partially made up for by the fact that they rarely complained and seemed grateful for the corrective lectures. Starting years ago, Little Tripoli had sought to minimize the damage by allowing Botany near-unfettered access to the mainland, which was presumably how Kirnon had met Crandall, the first woman Cam ever remembered Kirnon showing interest in beyond a strictly admiring-the-scenery observation.

"Of course she eats meat," Kirnon said, offended. The vegans on the _Daedalus_ had confused the hell out of him when he'd first encountered them. "If she would like to learn how to hunt, I would be happy to teach her. _She_ has the patience and stillness to master a bow."

This was another dig at Cam, who'd been told more than once that he'd have been a miserable failure as a Salish brave. Cam ignored it; point of fact he handled a compound bow just fine and it wasn't his fault that Kirnon thought they didn't count.

"You sure you want your first date to be a movie?" he asked instead. "You weren't exactly enthralled with the medium back when."

The _Daedalus_ had had movie nights, same as Atlantis, although the selection had probably been closer to what got screened in Little Tripoli than the frou-frou stuff that the Atlantis Film Society showed. Early on in their _Daedalus_ days, Kirnon had gone to one, decided it was a waste of his time, and never gone again.

"It will be most familiar to her," Kirnon said with a shrug. "It will be her environment and her culture. I will be the only part new and strange."

Cam didn't know what stage this 'relationship' was at, if Kirnon had even spoken to her or what his intentions were -- they'd never really gotten around to discussing Salish courting rituals -- or even if Crandall knew who Kirnon was beyond 'the one handed guy', if that. Or, and this was not a trivial point, whether she'd be at all interested in pursuing a relationship with someone not from Earth.

Before the Robler Rock -- before Beijing and Dhaka, really -- this had been a different question. Cam knew that fraternizing with the Pegasus natives had been prohibited for the marines and effectively a moot point for the civilians, who'd rarely interacted with the locals in any context that would allow intimate socialization. Doctor Esposito's relationship with Lieutenant Gillick was about as exotic and transgressive as it got. Now? Now Atlantis was flooded with refugees not from Pegasus and not from Earth and Cam was relieved that none of this fell under his jurisdiction. There were no official rules regarding who could hook up -- there really couldn't be -- but that didn't mean that interplanetary dating was any kind of popular. Throw in the fact that Kirnon wasn't Jonas or one of the Galarans or one of the others from a technologically advanced world, and was familiar with modern weaponry but not modern anything else... Cam didn't want Kirnon, who so rarely exposed his feelings like this, to be hurt if Crandall wasn't ready to date outside her native gate address.

"To answer your original question, then," Cam said, "I'd go with _Casino Royale_ over _Titanic._ You'll be bored stiff by _Titanic_ and everything you're gonna find stupid and pointless is what's she's going to think is sweet and romantic. Plus Celine Dion should've been utilized as a weapon against the Ori."


End file.
